So far, so intoxicating, and while this miraculously conceived recording is no Congotronics - the Konono No 1 record built around the trance-inducing patterns of electric thumb pianos that elicited critical hosannahs from electronica nuts and post-rock pseuds, also released by the Belgian label Crammed - it has its own manifest charm.
"It is extremely probable that the aircraft was shot down by mistake by the Czechoslovak air force and in order to cover it up the secret police conceived the record plunge," Hornung said.
Conceived by record producer Lou Adler, who admired backing singers so much that he sometimes paid them triple scale, it features 27 vocalists, including Clayton, Clydie King, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Jones and Edna Wright, injecting the likes of Chimes of Freedom and Lay Lady Lay with Baptist gusto.
David Browne from Entertainment Weekly in a review of her first compilation album The Immaculate Collection, commented that "in theory a 30-ish urban sophisticate singing in the voice of a pregnant teen, sounds ridiculous", but added that "with the help of collaborators like Stephen Bray and Patrick Leonard, though, turns into a perfectly conceived pop record".
This was the first record where we've gotten this certain level of notoriety and we were just, like, 'fuck it.'" He also felt that Washing Machine was conceived and recorded like some of the band's earlier albums: "It hearkens back to records like Sister where we'd write a bunch of songs, go into the studio for a month, put them down, then go on the road and play them for a year.
The whole thing was elaborately conceived and recorded, but to me was a fiasco.
Conceived and recorded in an abandoned Arctic Circle mining town for which it was named, the album mingles elliptical melancholy with digital-sampling extravagance.
So the much-recounted tales of how White Ladder was conceived and recorded in the domestic bedroom, trucks outside rumbling on to the master tape, with no major deal and the money running out, make perfect sense.
The singer and pianist Daryl Sherman conceived and recorded a tribute to Bailey (and to Red Norvo, Bailey's husband) in 1996, presented it at the following year's JVC Jazz Festival and has been a Bailey champion throughout her career.
